Adweek 2013

I recently attended Adweek 2013 in NYC. I was up to support our CCO, Perry Fair, who was speaking on a panel about our SXSW effort earlier this year, WALTER. I saw tons of great panels, met a boatload of nice people, and had a great experience. I think it’s fair to say that “Data is the new Social” and by that I mean, every conversation was about data. Security, storage, analytics, mining, leveraging. You name it and there’s a “buzzverb” associated with it.

I’ve been talking for a while about what I think I like to call a “data education” among the more traditional (non-digital, or “digitally challenged”) folks, account management teams, creative teams, etc. I think there’s a real opportunity to begin to institute a broader awareness of what digital means with respect to data and why there’s never a wrong time to begin looking at strategies that take advantage and leverage data opportunities. I love the idea of “dog whistle” terms, and using them as springboards for conversation. I would even propose moving upstream and rather than focus on things like, “testing”, and “analytics”, I would latch on to phrases like, “what if?” or “how could we?” which lend themselves to talking about measurement, accountability, and proving hypotheses. Once you begin having those conversations, the world opens up!

So everyone at Adweek was jumping on that bandwagon and I think the realization was that data and advertising are all grown up. It’s no longer a conversation happening in the nerdier corners of the agency. The stuff we’re creating is helping shape our understanding of their audience’s consumption habit, channel preferences, and it helps you locate that elusive sweet spot where your context means everything.

Outside of AdvertisingWeek, the highlight for me was “Stand-Up Live” at the Gotham Comedy Club (love that name!) featuring Amy Schumer. I’m a HUGE fan of her show on Comedy Central and her recent appearances on the Comedy Central Friars Club Roasts. We were fortunate enough to get some tickets and were able to get into the show, which was a feat unto itself. The place is SMALL, I think there were barely 200 people in there, and I was about 20 feet away for one of the best stand-up shows I’ve ever seen.

I love these trips. A lot of times you genuinely learn things and anytime you can couple that with the reassurance that your head’s in the right place, and you’re having the right conversations about the right topics.